On Friday, Josh took his first day off since our Colorado vacation.

Apparently, grad school is hard. And they make you take a lot of [in my opinion] pointless tests. Besides the final exams, which determine whether your hand is fast enough to copy what your photographic mind remembers from the volumes of equations within a ridiculously short amount of time you’ve learned enough to pass the class; you also have to take a Qualifying Exam (known to the zombies around here as the ‘QE’).

Now, to be fair, I will tell you that Josh got to pick the questions on this test. And by that, I mean he got to pick the classes which the test will be over. And by that, I mean he had to choose the classes that fit within the guidelines of what he needs for his major. Or specialty. Or do they just call it a thesis? And he did get to pick that out. All by himself.

Anyway, the test is over four classes that Josh chose. There will be four questions. One question for each class. The professors who are creating these questions, for the most part (if not all), did not teach Josh. Some even used different text books. Or no text book at all. Some have severe pride issues that prevent them from creating questions that anyone could logically be expected to complete in the time given. He has four hours to take this test.

And these are not the questions we had in school. (Unless you also got your doctorate in Electrical and Computer Engineering, specializing in Robust Attitude Control with Fuzzy Momentum Unloading for Satellites Using Reaction Wheels… or something like that) They are not multiple choice. Or True/False. Not even the True/False where you have to correct the False statements or you only get half credit. They’re even worse than essay questions.

My husband has spent the past month and a half, from 9am to 6pm (shorter hours on the weekends, of course), studying equations that are longer than most of my college essays. Put together. He is memorizing these equations.

Needless to say, he was feeling quite burnt out by Friday (This monstrosity of a test is this coming Tuesday. Please PRAY!!). So he took the day off. And The Mommy was ecstatic. See, when The Daddy works overtime, so does The Mommy – by default. When The Daddy is home, The Mommy gets to say, “Here, take the baby” and then either accomplish something useful or just put her feet up. I like it when The Daddy’s home.

So on Friday (our day off), we didn’t get up until the babies forced us out of bed. We had a lazy breakfast. We didn’t shower. We had a lazy lunch. We played with the kiddies. I folded a week’s worth of laundry. We had a lazy dinner (leftovers are AMAZING). And then we ran two and half miles. In eighteen minutes and eight seconds.

Yeah… One of these things is not like the other…

He offered to run without me, but as I’m desperately trying to avoid being the fat one in this relationship, I just couldn’t let that happen.

All in all, though, it was a great day off.